


relaxation

by rukafais



Series: one within the iris [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, gay as heck, when do i start tagging these fics with the actual relationship tag is the question here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 19:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7066651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genji and Zenyatta learn that touch isn’t as loaded as they both thought, and enjoy a nice spring day without doing anything much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	relaxation

**Author's Note:**

> Slooowly building up their relationship. I imagine Genji at least would have been super touch averse when he left Overwatch (and Zenyatta would have been very quick to react to people trying to touch him), so it's progress!

Spring is here. 

Zenyatta remarks on the changing weather; Genji simply watches the world. He’d always taken seasons for granted; now his body, his new systems (ones he’s had for a long time but never began to accept, until now) track the precipitation in the air, the speed of the wind, the subtle changes in temperature. Things he wouldn’t have noticed before, as a human.

(He’d simply taken it in, data streaming into his brain, things that were just there. Later, he’d wished he could switch it off, go silent forever; plunge himself and everything that he was into darkness, crack himself open and let everything rush out until he was empty. Now he examines it with a kind of wonder, a new perspective.

He wonders if this is how Zenyatta sees things all the time.)

He perceives - other things, as he sits on the riverbank, watching the water roar past. The river - different from the one he’d stood in a year before - laps at the earth that contains it, fed by melting snow and ice. He stares into it, and breathes in; clears his mind.

He remembers, some time during winter, when he had learned to meditate at last, given in to Zenyatta’s offer.

\-----

“Think of nothing,” Zenyatta says, maintaining his pose. They are sheltering for the night, and Genji is too restless to sleep 

or too afraid, perhaps.

_I still cannot see your face-_

So, instead, he’d turned to accompanying Zenyatta in meditation, finding nothing else to do.

“How am I supposed to think of nothing,” Genji says, a frustrated note in his voice. Meditation had never been his strong suit.

“Listen,” the omnic soothes, his voice low and soft. “Open your senses to the world around you. Each thing coexists, and so must you.”

Genji breathes in; he listens. Bit by bit, he opens connections to those senses he’d rejected, shaping a space in his mind for it to flow around. Data trickles in, bit by bit, feeding him a picture of the outside world more complete than the ones his eyes can tell him.

“I am not empty,” he breathes, soft and quiet and wondering when he gained enough of himself back to be able to do this without flinching away, without rejecting it.

“No,” Zenyatta says, quietly. “You have never been so, Genji.”

There is such emotion in that phrase that it gives him pause. 

He sinks deep inside his own mind, wondering still. When his sensors tell him of metal on metal, the gentle kiss of frail fingers on his cheek, he doesn’t mind it at all.

\-----

The disturbance of air, the small rush as birds flutter past, wings beating hard. The scrabble of animals going about their business, emerging from their hiding places, shaking off the winter snow. 

Zenyatta is a few feet behind him, that unmistakeable signal impossible to misidentify. The omnic’s entire frame hums and crackles with strange energy, whatever sets his weaponry into motion and wraps around his body, every joint and piece. If he had the sensors to see it, the omnic would likely shine.

“Ah, Genji,” the omnic says, after a while. His voice tinged with amusement. “This is the longest you have meditated. Is there something on your mind?” 

He can _feel_ the omnic’s hand moving through the air around it, vivid and charged like nothing else. He reaches up to touch their fingertips together as soon as it comes within range. Zenyatta’s movements are a little shy (it’s cute) before he rests his hand against Genji’s, palm to palm, fingers against each other.

“Not at all,” Genji says, an echo of that same amusement bubbling up in his chest. Bright and strong, cutting through the tangle of complexity and dark feelings he knows is still there.

It’s a fleeting moment, but he holds onto it as long as he can.

“I do not know why you are so surprised,” he continues. “I had a good master to teach me.” (The title, a word he hasn’t spoken in a long time, comes so easily.)

“Maybe so,” Zenyatta says, without missing a beat, “but in that case, you are certainly the best of students. You have taken to it more readily than any other I have taught, once you accepted it.” 

There is a drawn-out silence, and then Genji simply laughs, feeling the hum of the omnic’s own laughter through their clasped hands. Vibrant.

There’s not really anything to laugh _about_ , specifically. It’s just for the joy of it; the liveliness of being connected to someone else who understands you, even a little.

Zenyatta sits beside him, and when Genji lets go of their loose grip, reaches out, the omnic tilts his head and willingly accepts the cyborg’s touch on his cheek, brings his hand up to rest on top of his.

There’s no motive in touching, in connecting. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do except sit here and enjoy the day, if they wish.

It’s nice.


End file.
